


A Good Man

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Fluff, Goobers in Love, Mild Angst, Mild Language, Post Season 8, Unplanned Pregnancy, i remain soft for Gendry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 15:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18720241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Arya Stark is confronted with a fear she never thought she’d experience.And this time, she isn’t so sure she can overcome it.(AKA a post season 8 gendrya soft times pregnancy fic)





	A Good Man

**Author's Note:**

> All it takes is one person telling me Gendrya won’t be endgame and then I have to write a post s08 fic (on the phone in the car so forgive my mistakes)
> 
>  
> 
> Enjoy????

Arya had forgotten the name of fear. She had studied its forgetting, learned the way to release it from her, had turned her back on the very thought of its name.

Something like fear had crept back in when she returned to Winterfell; and, to be honest, she’d assumed that would be her fate when Nymeria turned her back on her in the wood. Arya Stark came home, and fear  _ is _ home, just as much as love or warmth or safety is. Home means something can be lost; losing something means you’re afraid to have it taken away, and that fear can destroy a person.

Winterfell is the place where she won, where she won for all of them. It’s also the place where she found fear again, and in finding that fear, lost her own battle with the world.

Striking down the Night King should have freed her, and for days after, she feels lighter than air.

Then comes the battle for King’s Landing, something she doesn’t much care about, but assists all the same because Cersei Lannister should not have her eyes open in a world where Ned Stark will never open his eyes again; then comes Daenerys Targaryen, Jon at her side as their dragons melt the Iron Throne, and the kingdoms become kingdoms under no singular rule, but a loose confederacy of states who swear to fight together should the need ever arise.  

And Arya is faced with a decision, one that weighs her down. Where does a girl who has no name go? With no war left to fight, where does Arya Stark belong? 

Tyrion stays with Sansa, to no one’s surprise, and they become the Wardens of the North. Winterfell will always be Arya’s home, but home is more than a place, it is a people: Sansa is her home, but Arya has other people she loves, and she waits to see where the rest of them fall before she decides where to go in the days after the wall. 

Jon and Dany remain in King’s Landing, where a council is set up to help govern, a council comprised of representative of every house and every banner, common folk and lowborns too. The last Arya had heard, Jon built Dany a house with a red door, bucking tradition the way Jon Snow loves to do. Jon tells her he built her a room to visit, if she ever wants, and Arya smiles and agrees but thinks privately that it’s too soon for that.

Edmure Tully returns to the Riverlands with his wife and son, and works to revitalize the land that had been destroyed. Arya has fond memories of Uncle Edmure, but not fond enough to warrant a visit.

She isn’t sure who controls the Vale these days, as Sansa had merely smiled when she asked, but she hopes they closed that bloody door. Arya is not endeared to the Vale, despite its connection to her family, and she thinks privately she will be pleased if she never sees that part of Westeros again.

Arya wants to visit Dorne and meet the fierce female warriors she’s heard so much about, but there is time now, time to visit and time to discover, so she will wait.

Sam Tarly returns to the Reach to help reclaim what was lost to the Tyrells; she doesn’t know him well, but Jon loves him, and that’s good enough for her. If he ever has need, he’ll have her sword. When she tells him as much, he blushes and stammers a confused, “ _ T-thank you? I’m not sure if that’s necessary, but thank you, _ ” which only makes her like him more. The Reach is not for a girl who is no one, so she tells him to send a raven if he does require her service, and watches him leave King’s Landing with a fond smile.

Ser Jaime Lannister returns to the Westerlands, and while Arya will never forgive him for what he did to Bran, she hears stories of his fairness and kindness, and remembers that everyone changes, and the Kingslayer is no different. It helps that he’s joined by his bride, a just and powerful woman who has earned Arya’s respect time and time again; the Westerlands do not need another fighter when Brienne of Tarth is their queen, so Arya does not follow Jaime to make sure he continues on his trajectory of goodness. Ser Brienne will keep him in line.

Gendry Waters becomes Gendry Baratheon; when he turns to Arya after the first Council of King’s Landing and asks if she’s ever seen Storm’s End, she shakes her head, and takes his offered hand. She doesn’t turn around or doubt her choice or feel any sort of fear because this is just another adventure, after all. Arya wants to see the world, and Gendry wants to share his part of it with her, and there’s no fear to be had in that.

And then she misses her courses.

It’s nothing noticeable for two months; Arya’s missed them before, when she was starving and abused and on the run. They’ve been consistent since she returned to Winterfell, but she chalks it up to the stress of battle, the leftover trauma of what happened with the dead, and she ignores it, because a girl does not fear the absence of something.

But, when it becomes evident that it’s not an  _ absence  _ but rather a  _ presence.  _

The fear sets in.

Arya is training with her sword when the first wave of nausea hits; she’s been sore for days, weirdly tender and sensitive to things she normally doesn’t give two shits about. Then, she’s throwing her sword to the side mid-feint, and she leaves a very confused partner behind her as she races for the toilet. She doesn’t quite make it, and vomits spectacularly into a nearby pot.

The fear grows worse.

She’s been pushing the thought away for weeks now, but as she sits on the floor, mouth tasting foul, eyes watery, stomach still roiling like she’s on one of the Greyjoy’s bloody ships, Arya’s heart is seized with a fear, one more painful than she’s ever experienced.

This is not death, after all. This is something so much worse than death.

“No,” she mutters, shoving up the wall to stand on trembling legs. “Oh,  _ shit. _ ”

“Arya?” Gendry walks towards her, his face red from the warmth of the forge, his fingers stained with coal, clearly having forgotten that he’s a Lord now, and lords don’t stand at the forge all day working like they need to earn their bread. 

He looks worried, and Arya hates it. She’s so afraid that he’ll look at her different now, that he’ll be tender where he never was before, that he’ll lock her up and make her lie down and call doctors to her, and she pants for a few seconds, anxiety roiling and uncoiling inside of her.

“They said you were sick?” He frowns at the soiled pot next to her, and Arya kicks it behind her like it could possible hide it.

“No,” she says, falsey cheery. “I ate something strange at breakfast, that’s all.”

“You weren’t at breakfast,” Gendry points out patiently. “I waited, and the Lady Stark never showed.”

She huffs indignantly at his obvious barb, but his smile is still gentle, his eyes concerned, and she can’t stand it.

“I have to...” she darts down the corridor, ignoring the way she can feel Gendry’s gaze pushing into her back.

Arya remains anxious all day, and when she passes by the healer’s chambers more than once in the castle of Storm’s End, she grits her teeth and almost knocks, but she balks when she hears Gendry’s voice behind the door.

_ Why does that bloody idiot have to be everywhere?  _ She thinks, exasperated, and then listens in on the conversation.

“....she’s tired, more than she used to be, and she hasn’t eaten a full meal in days,” he’s saying quietly, and she stiffens at the realization that he’s talking about her. “Could it be the climate that’s not agreeing with her?”

“The Starks are a hardy lot,” the old healer chuckles. “And Lyanna is the hardiest of them all, Lord Baratheon.”

There’s a noticeable pause. “...I’m talking about  _ Arya  _ Stark, Maester Thorne. Arya, not Lyanna. Lyanna Stark is dead.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” the old man coughs. “Forgive me. But do not worry, my lord.  _ Arya _ might just have a spring fever. If it continues another week, encourage her to visit me, and in the meantime, urge her to take care of herself.”

“I’ve got better luck of going out to the pasture and convincing that mean old one-eyed bull to let me ride it than I’d have asking Arya Stark to take care of herself,” Gendry points out with a laugh, and Arya creeps away, her stomach twisting again.

_ He won’t think I’d make a good mother,  _ she realizes.  _ And he’d be right.  _

Arya hasn’t had a mother in years; she was murdered only a few dozen feet away from Arya, but she hadn’t been able to see her, hadn’t been able to seek her guidance or love in those last moments. Sansa had been their mother’s child, and Arya had been their father’s, but now she wishes that she’d taken in some more of the tenderness Catelyn sometimes tried to show her, if only so she would have any idea of how to do this. Her child might not know kindness nor tenderness nor constancy with a faceless girl as a mother, and the fear is too much, the fear that she’ll let down one of her pack.

She climbs to the highest point of Storm’s End that day, and glowers down into the courtyard, wanting to be somewhere solitary, a place no one could find her - it reminds her painfully of Bran, how he used to climb and climb and climb like he’d be able to fly. Although now, she supposes he could. Arya curls up in the window overlooking the courtyard and wraps an arm around her treacherous middle, scowling down below and weighing her options, wondering how she’ll be able to pick one without being clouded by fear. 

Arya Stark cannot be no one, not when she has  _ someone,  _ or something that might one day be someone, inside of her. She doesn’t know what to do with the anchor that’s suddenly taken root inside her, chaining her to this life, and this face, and this name. 

It terrifies her.

Down below in the courtyard, she sees the lord of the Stormlands pause, a hammer held loose in his hand, to direct a young child who’s practicing with a bow and arrow. While Gendry has absolutely no experience with a bow and arrow, he still takes the time to squat down and admire the child’s work, watching as they string their arrow and let it fly. 

From her vantage point, Arya can see how it clatters away from the target, glancing off where it should embed, and she can name five things the child did that could easily be corrected.

Gendry smiles -- she can see that from clear up here, the way his whole face lights up, and her stomach churns in a less unpleasant way -- and claps the child on the arm. She can’t hear what’s said, but the child lifts their bow a second later, and this time, the arrow’s aim is true.

Arya slips from the window and heads off into the castle, a hand at her stomach, and her mind miles and years away.

Her fear is forgotten as she slips into her own past, recalls her footsteps at a time where it was very dangerous to be Arya Stark -- not that it’s ever been safe. 

She remembers a boy with rough hands and a firm voice standing up for her when no one else would. Gendry Waters had shown a king’s bravery that day, standing at her side and stopping the other boys from picking on her. He’d had nothing to gain, she remembers, and everything to lose, but he’d stood up for a stranger and asked for nothing. 

A fear of her child not knowing kindness grows steadily fainter.

She remembers the day Gendry revealed he knew she was a girl; how he’d just let it slip with a teasing smile, how the way he treated her didn’t shift in the slightest because of who she was. She also remembers the way he’d balked at realizing she was a lady, and he a lowborn (although that hadn’t been true, had it?), how he’d apologized for what he thought were indiscretions, how gentle he was to her in the days where she knew nothing but terror. 

The thought that her child might not ever feel protected starts to slip away.

She remembers seeing him in Winterfell, when the pain of seeing him dragged away was still so fresh, remembers him making the steel sing, just like he always said he did; she remembers the weight of the weapon in her hand, the one he built for her when she asked, the one he gave to her with no deep protests about her being a girl or a lady or weaker than him or another soldier. She remembers the relief on his face when they emerged from the battle, alive and relatively unscathed. 

Gendry Waters is constancy, he is loyalty, he is …

Gendry is a good man, she remembers. He has been a good man since the day she met him, and he will be a good father.

Arya runs through the halls a little quicker now, her destination clear in mind.

***

Maester Thorne, who has been the healer at Storm’s End since the days before the Mad King, pauses as he crosses the entry hall of the castle. At his side, his apprentice halts as well, scrolls clutched in his arms. 

“What is it, Maester?”

Thorne smiles and shakes his head, lifting his chin to the scene before them.

Lord Baratheon, king of the Stormlands, stands with a look of abject reverence on his face, a palm pressed to Lady Stark’s stomach, his other palm pressed to her cheek. For once, all thoughts of war seem to have fled her face, and a sense of peace surrounds the pair, a well-earned and hard-fought peace. 

“Maester?”

“Nothing my boy,” Thorne says with a shake of his head. “‘Tis only a healing.” 

And they continue on their way.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!!!! I’m sure I’ll be back on my bullshit tonight after episode 4!!!!!!


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